There are a lot of things to say about the July 4th holiday and America’s 250th birthday. There’s a wave of political nonsense, world issues and just depressing and terrible stuff that is riding along with what is supposed to be a weekend of celebration.
I had a ton of thoughts and opinions on all that stuff… and I don’t want to do it. I remembered what I posted all those many years ago before I even had my own site and was using Live Journal (yes, I know, old…):
This is all for me. I will continue, some 20ish years later, to do as I damn well please.
Go out and be the positive you want to see in the world. Continue to talk about fun things, get memes stuck in people’s heads, play silly music and watch fireworks. Have the best holiday you can have!
Yesterday was Father’s Day. As terrible as Mother’s Day was, yesterday wasn’t bad. We got to see my father. We got to eat some good food (they grilled steak and had corn on the cob and potato salad). We got to play cards and laugh while we played. It was a lot of fun but that was really the extent of it.
I think I wanted more. Part of the issue was me not for anything. Not asking for anything to be done or gifted or anything. We got back from seeing my father my daughter essentially disappeared into her room. I didn’t see her again that day. Disappointing, but not the end of the world. I get to see her again today and have dinner together.
I was talking things through with a women I’ve recently met. Her husband passed away recently. In much the same way that Mother’s Day was rotten in our house, Father’s day was extremely difficult at her house. She said a solid cry is always good for you. I think I’ve done quite enough of that without the help of the media or marketing. While I intellectually understood how it was before, I viscerally know now that not everybody enjoys every holiday the same way. Intellectually understanding and knowing are two very different things.
I have always tried to be respectful of others on holidays for that reason. I’m not offended by the holidays of others and expect that not everyone celebrates like I do. Something that has bothered me lately is general push of “special day” related crap. I guess the right word is marketing. I haven’t paid it much attention in the past. Marketers and salespeople work (generally) with the assumption that this holiday simply applies to all. This is nominally true, but individual cases may vary.
Case in point ~ my daughter is a much better person than I am. As she was out shopping a number of people accosted her (accosted is a strong word a number of sales people endeavored to get her attention to get her to come in and spend her money) and their sales tactic was, “Don’t you want to do these things for your mom?”. Well yes she would love to be able to do those things for her mom but that’s not our situation anymore. It was really crushing to her. If it were me, I would have answered, “I’d love to but she just died”. She is not that person. She’s clearly a better person than I am because she was not mean. She did not lash out. She kept it all to herself and the salespeople went about their day without having that negative interaction.
The point is try to be a little bit thoughtful about how you approach things with people. Your point of view may vary. It matters. Little gestures can make a world of difference. Try to take care of other. Do the best you can and enjoy whatever holiday works for you – even if it’s one you make up.
I grabbed a new tool. I set it up and tested it out on the drive home. I thought about just posting the raw words, but it’s a rambling mess. What I did get though, was around 1,800 words of raw, rambling mess – so this looks like it might help me keep moving posts like this forward more efficiently. There will be some edit needs, but this might actually work this time.
So here we go for test number three! I tried out a different app yesterday, rambled on mercilessly for probably 15 or 20 minutes. When I went back to look at the text from that particular app – it had stopped recording as soon as the screen shut off. That rambling mess – almost all of it went away. I hope to get the little piece of that posted in the near future. That’s the point of this. I want to be able to put together some thoughts in a more timely manner get things out for blog posts. Move things forward. There are a lot of times when the moment I sit down and I think to myself, “Okay, here it is. I’m going to… I’m going to write!” and I end up knocking out a blog post when what I should be doing is working on one of my stories.
That was as far as I got before this thing errored out.
I think that’s going to be a big problem. I’m trying to do this while I’m driving. It allows me to use the drive time usefully.
This thing has errored out like twice while I’m driving and that’s really sort of the point. It needs to be working while I’m driving. I need to not pay attention to the app and focus on driving. That is the primary thing I should be doing. The app should allow me to use my drive time in a more productive manner.
I mentioned the drive time to a friend at a convention recently and he suggested it. He suggested a different app, but that different app uses AI. I don’t know if this one uses AI or not cuz maybe it doesn’t. I will check it out. I am not a fan of using AI. I had a whole rambling thing about AI yesterday and I hope that this one doesn’t go away. If I see the error message pop up out of the corner of my eye I’ll just stop and then we’ll come back to it later. Until then I’ll just keep going.
So – drive time. I want to use this drive time productively. I want to use it for getting thoughts out. Stuff that I can use for quick edits to send into a blog post. If I can get the blog post put together quickly, that saves me time. I do want blogging to be a thing that I continue to do. I do want to continue. I’ve done it for years, but have fallen off a lot after recent events. I’ll start working on stuff and fall off because time, then I’ll start working on stuff again. I put forth a lot of effort in just starting and stopping. I’m throwing opinions out there and keeping the ‘publicity’ going, but what I should be doing is writing more of my stories. I need to get my work out there, so we’re going to start with the blog post and see if I can move forward faster.
Moving to the stories as far as using this speech to text thing won’t be as easy. The first thing that I noticed after yesterday’s attempt is that speaking for number of minutes continuously not an easy thing. Particularly if it’s on scripted. I was all over the place. I was throwing thoughts at this thing yesterday from all over. I should probably be thankful most of it was lost, but even today I can tell already – this is going to be super stream of consciousness.
I don’t know, or I haven’t quite figured that part out yet. The most important thing is to make sure it works first. I will just chatter on as I’m on my drive home and we’ll see when we come up. The app says ‘unlimited length’ for posts and I’ll put it to the test.
Another part is I want to be traveling with purpose. So many topics have slid past just based on my ability to get to the computer and type. I want what I have to say to have some kind of meaning as well. I say that because I’ve discovered that I’m still very upset about something that happened (many years ago) with a local news source. I went on a rant yesterday about this and I got caught up calling it a newspaper and describing a blog in column inches… it wasn’t great. The incident was that this news source had a columnist that they paid – yes, an actual live human – and actual live human was in a columnist position getting paid and you are potentially blocking somebody else out of that position doing actual work. What bothered me? This individual went on at length saying, “well… I’ve got nothing.”
I was angry then and I’m still annoyed now. IF you don’t have anything to say anymore, get out of the way! That person got paid! It just… it bothered me. I saw a story recently that said she was still that person until she recently retired. I shouldn’t be so upset about it. I suppose that’s pretty much any channel these days. If you turn on any media source there are a whole lot of people with nothing to say.
Having this time should help me add words.I did some rough math in my head. Even if I’m only throwing down… keep it to round numbers here… I manage a thousand words three times per week when I’m driving back from the office. That’s 3,000 words that I didn’t have before. 3,000 words a week for a month, there’s another 12,000. Hopefully keeping things moving. Trying to do the math in my head that’s like 72,000 words or so in half a year. A pretty good chunk of a novel right there. With edits and formatting, I think I could put together a book in a year. That’s if it’s only the words that I use while I’m using the speech to text. That sort of thing is a huge boost, so fingers crossed.
Doing this will mean, vocal chords warming up. It takes effort, it takes time, and if I’m going to do anything with a story I can’t just off the cuff throw Story Stuff down like this and have it be successful. Side note – talking about hundreds or thousands of words is great, but that’s if they’re good words. There’s no guarantee that the words will be worthwhile at all. There’s the very real chance that it’ll be half that amount just because most of it, the majority of it is simply garbage. I’ll be interested to see how that was typed. I pronounced garbage with a bit of an accent. A person who’s speaking doesn’t always translate directly to text. What you’re saying, the emphasis, the hesitations… those sorts of things don’t automatically come through.
I have always struggled with moving a story told to the written word. I think that’s part of the explanation of why my writing is so slow. If I’m talking to somebody and we’re having a conversation and I have emphasis and I have sound effects and accent and I can tell a really good story. That doesn’t always translate directly to text. While I may be a decent storyteller that doesn’t make me a good writer. It’s a really hard thing to translate from one to the other.
So I’m testing out my stream of Consciousness here to see how it looks, how it works. I’m certain that I repeated myself probably three or four times within the context of the last 10 or 15 minutes but that’s the other piece of this. When you don’t have a plan, when you don’t have an outline, when you don’t have a goal in mind, then you just go you ramble and sometimes you get repetitive and sometimes end up with the similar word creeping into your text over and over and over again. I might need to find and replace, or just a word search in general to find that word that you’ve used again and again and amusingly enough again should probably be one of those words.
Having said all of that before this, I do intend to research whether or not this tool uses AI. Part of that is I am not a fan of AI. My background in science fiction has shown AI as the bad guy so much, for so long, it’s difficult to escape from that mindset for me. I have a minimal understanding of large language model training and that sort of thing. It’s certainly not enough to say I understand it. All I could really say is that I’m vaguely conversational about it. It’s emotional for me. It’s the feeling portion of it I’m not comfortable with. If I don’t feel comfortable with it then I’m not going to want to use it. There’s also a part of me that wants to do the background research because all of the news lately shows the amount of resources that AI is consuming in terms of power and computer chips and water resources. All of that sort of thing along with the massive number of data centers that are being put forward in planning processes right now… that feels like the sort of thing that could very easily get out of hand. Far too easy using it and not being aware of how it’s going to affect our environment.
For my purposes, tools that I have seen so far that companies have put forward for AI do a lot of things very poorly, very quickly. I can get you a lot of wrong answers in a heartbeat. If we are going to depend on them then we definitely want to make sure that we are prepared. Correct answers for things that we want to be able to have a level of confidence in. When we say “AI did this and I’m pretty sure it’s correct” it’s not always enough. I don’t want to say “hey AI did this and I never checked it out” and then find out at some point later it absolutely didn’t work, was wrong, and now the stuff that I’m working with is wrong and that, that really bothers me. Do I think AI is going away? Absolutely not. There are too many companies that have invested too much money. They’re putting AI in places that it absolutely does not belong. Eventually the market will find an appropriate level and straighten itself out. When we know the appropriate tools, the appropriate use cases of those tools, then we can deal with it. It does NOT need to be in everything. In fact it bothers me that it has been forced into my email account already. I don’t want it there. I don’t need it there. I don’t need some computer telling me ‘hey I can help you write that better’. No, you really can’t. You’re going to use generic terminology that doesn’t fit my voice. My stories, my voice. That matters. Not enough people get that.
There it is. My massive, rambly, on my way home piece. I am now actually within probably 5 or 10 minutes of the house and I have just let all of this go~
And it errored out again. A fine point to wrap up at.
Far more editing time than I wanted (close to an hour). More words than I thought (final count just over 1,900). A successful test. More rambly words to follow!
Just imagine the little movie clapper thing making that snapping sound… because imagination is about as far as I got. Here’s the text:
As I am on the road home for testing this out for the first time and I have no idea well I have no idea number one how long I’ll be able to just speak at this thing number two I have no idea what exactly I’m going to speak about just trying to test it for the sake of testing it and number three I suck an indexing and I didn’t have a third thing so now comes the real test because the screen is about to shut off and I’m not sure where exactly the whole thing ends or starts or how long a pause I can have if I don’t have a actually stop doing this see if it actually picked up all these words that’s it for now post the results of this test up to my blog and then we’ll try it again later
That is the rambling result of more than twenty minutes of talking. Turns out the mic shuts off if the screen goes off in that app. I have to consider that a complete fail. I have no use for a tool meant to keep my hands free if I have to keep paying attention to it and poking it every couple of seconds. It didn’t keep up well with my speaking pace, nor did it catch everything.
I’ll look up and try another one here over the next day or so. This one is getting uninstalled.
It’s my birthday. Not a significant milestone year, nor a fun round number. Just a Wednesday, in my opinion.
Lots of people put out easy content like this to fill blog posts. I really wanted this to be a filler with that kind of “hey, here’s all the grown up stuff I’m doing” or “check out all the hobby stuff!”, but I just don’t feel much like celebrating this year.
This is my first birthday without Beck. My daughter already had to deal with all these feelings, but it’s my first. I know she’s got a small something brewing (or maybe a big something? Dunno – that’s why they’re surprises). I’ve got to go to work, and I don’t even have the option to work from home.
I’m sure there are new aches and pains, some kind of joke about ‘old’ and all that, but there’s a missing element of joy this year. I’ll smile and celebrate, but it’s just not the same.
Over the past Memorial Day weekend I was once again invited to be a participant in the annual science fiction convention put on by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. I’ve been attending for a long time, and I’ve been a panelist for at least a decade, and probably more. Providing a standard “con report” just doesn’t seem to be… fair? True? I’m not sure I can give a point of view that somebody who does not regularly attend conventions would really find usable. I see things that many con goers would not, simply because I am so familiar with how things work. I miss things that a newcomer might crash into just based on experience.
I was having a discussion with another panelist comparing this convention to another that we have both attended in the past. The ‘other’ convention did not fare well in the comparison.
I don’t think that I’ll be going to The Other Con this year, or perhaps again at all. My last trip there was a less than ideal experience. It isn’t worth my time, effort and treasure to go and put myself through a bunch of nonsense for such minimal returns. I have thought The Other Con to be dying for many years. Most of the people I know who used to attend have moved on to other things. They are not moving toward newer, more modern thinking in order to attract a more youthful audience. This will kill them eventually. Of course this death has been long predicted and has yet to come to pass.
In that aspect, I think Balticon is doing the right things. This year seemed to have a more youthful feel to the attendees, and attendance numbers did look stronger (pure speculative observation on my part). There were V-tubers and panels about virtual games. There was still science and art and publishing, along with costuming and music and so many other things – and that was all good in my opinon. There were thriving conversations and lots of camaraderie that I hadn’t seen there for a while.
The Other Con – I think they have a team of people that have not grown, nor changed in many decades. They demand that others bend to their plan, but have no real plan. Panel timing is a great example. Balticon has now given a half hour between panels for moving around and clearing the room. It means (potentially) fewer panels, but it helps all the guests and panelists feel better about things like that.
I try not to rant and rave about things going wrong. Fandom is a small community and, in the end, a volunteer one. I have worked on many a con staff and understand how difficult the behind the scenes world is. That being said, I know The Other Con can do better… and they chose not to. It’s the choice that bothers me more than the problems.
Please don’t get my wrong. I do understand that Balticon has its issues. Yes, I know about things in the past that are the source of bad feelings and enmity toward people there. I can’t say it’s a perfect con and I support my friends that have (much as I have with The Other Con) to just not go there anymore.
My weekend in Baltimore was bittersweet. It was the first time I’d gone to a convention since Beck’s passing. I was able to connect with old friends and discuss all the glorious memories we had made there in the past. There were some new friends and interesting experiences. There were the panels too! Some panels were good, others were disappointing – and one was a complete panel no-show. Terribly disappointing because I really wanted the details from that one.
I’m going to post about each of the panels I was on individually. Hopefully folks will get something good out of my notes. All in all, it was a good weekend. I hope they ask me to participate again next year.
I have been invited to be a panelist at Balticon 60. I’m very glad I’ve been invited again. I’ve been going to Balticon (the annual science fiction convention put on by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society) since #27. I wasn’t a panelist the entire time.
My very first year at the convention the artist guest of honor was Don Maitz. I had no idea who he was, or what was going on in general really, but I walked into the art show and was blown away. I immediately saw his full size painting _40 Thieves_ and couldn’t get enough. Then there was an author reading something cool to some fans who just happened to catch him in the hallway. Panels, games, and an entire convention of people interested in the same stuff I was! Stunned and happy by the end. I definitely wanted more.
A few years into my convention journey I went to a panel and only one of the actual people who were supposed to be on the panel actually showed up. The single panelist was a bit put out by this and decided to just grab a couple of people from the audience to fill the seats and make the panel go. I got asked to sit on the other side of the table for the first time. I was hooked. It was very cool to be on the “making it go” side of things.
So, here we are some decades later at Balticon #60. I’ve been gifted with the chance to discuss all sorts of things over the years and sit with some amazing creators.
I’m looking forward to this year, but I also expect this year to be bittersweet. My wife won’t be there for the first time since we started this crazy trip together. I will still get to see my friends (those who are still attending, but that’s another matter) and go to dinner, but it won’t be the same. Admittedly, Beck’s attendance had been limited over the last couple of years as her health struggles kept her away from anything with extended walking times involved. She still made the trip down for dinner. She could still hang with any discussion about whatever bonkers topic we came up with. There was a certain intimacy about our trips – and a shared history. I won’t have that intimacy, nor will I have the shared history anymore.
Will I make new memories? I’m sure of it. It simply won’t be the same. Too much is gone. Nothing could be the same. So I will move forward and attend to my panels. I will discuss myriad topics and share meals. It will certainly be a new kind of adventure.
IF you’re in the area and get to the convention, this will be my schedule:
Start Time Duration Room Name Session ID Title Fri 7:00 PM 1 Hr Virtual Panel Room 1 704 Knights of the Virtual Table Sat 7:00 PM 1 Hr Mount Washington 965 Curling Up with Cozy Fantasy Sun 11:30 AM 1 Hr St. George 706 Dark Lording for Fun and Profit Sun 1:00 PM 1 Hr St. George 699 Actions and Consequences: DMing THAT Guy
I suspect it’s depression. As a friend of mine told me, “It’s not official, but you’ve been through the peer review process”.
Have I been diagnosed? No. Do I intend to go see a doctor and get a pill? Also no. I don’t want to be medicated to be “not sad”. This is not only part of what it means to be alive but also an expected part of life. There has been a recent and dramatic change in my life. I lost my partner, my love, my constant. She is gone and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
I have days that are… what most would call “acceptable” I think, and then there are bad days. Are there ‘good’ days? I don’t know. If there are days that are ‘good’ then they are very rare indeed. Certainly not reaching any of the heights I have gone to before.
I start with all this because I suppose I think people expect it? I don’t know.
My site here has been lacking for a while now. It has happened in the past, but never quite like this. I’ve been trying to figure out an analogy that would work, some kind of story that would make a more digestible explanation of what I’ve been working with.
You ever go to the fridge, grab a carton or pitcher of juice and when you pick it up it feels a little lighter than you were expecting? There’s still a little bit of hope, but then you open it up and go to pour what you want into a glass and a dribble just makes the bottom of the glass wet and doesn’t come close to giving you the drink you really wanted? That has been me trying to do anything creative. The carton is empty. Sure, there are glimmers. Tiny moments happen when I think, “Oh – I’ll do that…” and then the energy is gone. There’s nothing there.
My creativity really matters to me. Being able to make art or write or create in some way is important and I’ve just had nothing. I don’t even know if the handful of things I’ve done (simply because I had to) even count. I mean, sure, I’ve made a handful of things, but I certainly don’t like them.
Maybe, just maybe, simply going through the motions and finishing something will help. I’m not sure. No promises. No grand gestures. There is the work, and hopefully I’ll be able to get back to it.
I didn’t start off intending to write about my anniversary. I had other plans for the evening. Plans that generally didn’t involve being sad, crying or going over list upon list of things that are different. There have been a lot of days that haven’t gone as planned in recent times.
Next week as I write this, would have been my wedding anniversary. This year would have marked the 31st year that Beck and I would have been together, but then the round number anniversaries were always times when something big went down.
I couldn’t remember what happened at our 5th anniversary for the longest time, but I actually think that was the year we bought our house. A large expense and definitely a positive and worthy thing to have going on around our special day.
Then there was our 10th. We thought that we should do something special for number ten. Maybe take a special trip, maybe make an extravagant purchase but something to celebrate a nice, round milestone. That was when Beck told me she was pregnant. Super positive, amazing thing for the tenth and definitely not time for traveling or making purchases that didn’t relate to all things baby.
Fifteen is the one, right? I mean it’s not a ten or a twenty, but fifteen is definitely a respectable time to celebrate. We started figuring out what we wanted, where we thought we might go, how travel would work with the kiddo… and Beck landed in the hospital. Her health had been ‘bumpy’ since giving birth and this was just one step of many on our long journey through the health system.
Fine. Twenty. A big deal to make it that far. Kiddo would be old enough that arrangements would be easier, we were more mature in our spending choices but we could still come up with something. This was going to be a great thing! It was going to be BIG! And then I got laid off and was out of work for three months. No money for celebrations. We’ll definitely do something for the twenty-fifth. Twenty five is a full quarter of a century!
Twenty five rolled around. Silver anniversary. We were making plans. It was going to “be a thing”. We were cautiously optimistic, but we could make it work. We had dealt with fifteen years of health issues but we seemed to have those in hand. The kiddo was older now and understood what it meant for Beck and I to go and do a special thing. We were going to make this happen! And then everything shut down because of the pandemic. Nobody was going anywhere. Hunker down and hope you survive.
Last year was number thirty. That’s the ‘pearl’ anniversary if you’re interested in the traditional gifts or labels. Thirty was a struggle. Beck had had a stroke, then another. She struggled to walk. She was slightly off, even on good days. There was no plan. We made it to the little restaurant at the end of the street for a dinner that she only ate half of, then we came right back home. I didn’t complain about it. What was the sense in that? We were together and that was the part that mattered. Big deal celebrations never seemed to be something that worked out for us. It was the last time we had a ‘romantic’ dinner out together.
That’s the round number problem. Did we wait for those round numbers? Absolutely not. That’s something we got right. If we had an opportunity to go do a thing, take a trip or celebrate being together or being a family that’s what we did. We started to get a sense of the round numbers thing so we did a really big anniversary trip for our 24th. It didn’t make any sense to others, but we had an amazing, wonderful, memorable trip. It was such a fantastic thing that will live in my memory forever.
Next week… I don’t know how I’ll navigate it. We never really got into making a big deal of the day itself. We would always recognize it. We always did something but the most important thing was that we did it together. I don’t have that this year for the first time in more than half of my life. It’s a Wednesday, and I have to work, but then what? I don’t know.
Don’t hesitate. Tell people you love them. Give an extra hug. Go on that trip you’ve been putting off. It matters.
A lot of my energy (emotional or otherwise) is still going toward… I don’t even know. Holding things together? Trying to move forward with my creative desires again? Writing without real inspiration is a struggle right now. I’m going to keep putting these things up here for myself, as a form of journal, but also as a reference for anyone who might need them and stumble across my page.
Things will never be the same again. Things can’t be like they were. There is only moving forward. There will be a new normal, although there’s no way to tell what that actually is. Things that have been habits are now coming into question. Why renew something that won’t see the use it did before? Is this box of stuff just uncovered something that needs to actually stay in the house? There clearly hasn’t been a need for it anytime in the past year (or more). Where did all of this stuff come from and what do we do with it now?
My wife had a habit of starting a journal, making three entries and setting it aside. It’s an odd thing to only notice after she’s gone, but there it is. There are easily a half dozen very nice journals with excellent paper and fun covers that have the first three pages or so written on and then added to a stack.
I recently found a journal start from back when her mom died. Beck tried to write out what she was feeling. I’m glad that she did. It’s an odd thing to still have her words, but I am glad for it. She was scared and sad and desperate to have things ‘be right’ again. If I had found this before her passing, I’m not sure I would have understood it well enough. Now I understand it all too clearly. The gap left by a person is never truly filled. I still have moments when I expect her to still be here. Those are not good moments. They are fewer now, but they still happen.
Maybe, in the future, I will pull the first few pages from each of the journals, scan them and create some kind of archive. I’m not sure Beck would like that, but I think my kiddo and I might need it. We shall see if that becomes a reality or not.
